Feathers, Gut-scrawl, History
A poem by Robert Penn Warren speaks to the right's desire to whitewash the history of America.
Going West
Westward the Great Plains are lifting, as you
Can tell from the slight additional pressure
The accelerator requires. The Sun,
Man to man, stares you straight in the eye, and the
Ribbon of road, white, into the sun’s eye
Unspools. Wheat stubble behind,
Now nothing but range land. But,
With tire song lulling like love, gaze riding white ribbon, forward
You plunge. Blur of burnt goldness
Past eye edge on each
Side back-whirling, you arrow
Into the heart of hypnosis.This is one way to write the history of America.
It was that way that day—oh, long
Ago. I had to slap
The back of my neck to stay awake,
Eyes westward in challenge to sun-gaze, lids
Slitted for sight. The land,
Beyond miles of distance, fled
Backward to whatever had been,
As though Space were Time.Now do I see the first blue shadow of foothills?
Or is that a cloud line?
When will snow, like a vision, lift?I do not see, sudden out of
A scrub clump, the wing-burst. See only
The bloody explosion, right in my face,
On the windshield, the sun and
The whole land forward, forever,
All washed in blood, in feathers, in gut-scrawl.It is, of course, a fool pheasant.
Hands clamping the wheel with death grip
To hold straight while brakes scream, I,
With no breath, at the blood stare. The ditch
Is shallow enough when the car, in the end, rolls in.Clumps of old grass, old newspaper, dry dirt—
All this got the worst off. Slowly,
Red sunset now reddening to blood streaks,
Westward the car moved on. Blood
Fried on the glass yet stove-hot. For the day—
It had been a scorcher. Later,
Handfuls of dry dirt would scrape off the fried blood.
Eventually, water at a gas station.Even now, long afterward, the dream.
I have seen blood explode, blotting sun, blotting
Out land, white ribbon of road, the imagined
Vision of snowcaps.—Robert Penn Warren
This favorite poem of mine, which, while it says so much about so many things, seems now to speak directly to the fear so many Republican politicians have of speaking bluntly and truthfully about the “blood and gut-scrawl” that has been such a sad part of the “history of America.” While Penn Warren is surely thinking most directly about the history of the native inhabitants of this country—that title, the feathers of the “fool pheasant,” the verb “arrow” steering us clearly to the many tragic, horrific events that accompanied European settlers’ march westward—it also speaks to the far right’s (nowadays known as the Republican party) obsession with retaining a vision of America as white and pure as Penn Warren’s imagined “vision of snowcaps.”
Here, too, we find that the sun “man to man stares you straight in the eye,” and I think of the myth of the rugged American, paragon of masculine virtue—the Rocky Balboas, John Waynes, Gippers, the mad orangeman redrawn with massive muscles, grasping an automatic weapon, feet apart, ready to defend the “American way” and make it great again…(such a far cry from the draft-dodging, cowardly, overweight insurrectionist stalker and rapist of present-reality / future history).
The poem smacks us as hard as the pheasant into the driver’s window, and while not stating “this is another way to write the history of America,” it forces us to see “The whole land forward, forever, / All washed in blood, in feathers, in gut-scrawl.” It chillingly juxtaposes the visions and dreams and ideals we tell ourselves are at the core of America with its history of murder, oppression, grotesque and unforgivable abuses.
It stops us in our tracks, rolls us into the ditch where we have to find a way to contend with it all, but contend we must, no matter how unpleasant—and washing away the caked on, blinding, impossible-to-see-through-even reality of it is not easily accomplished, for even with the actual blood gone, “even now, long afterward, the dream.”
While the radical right fear claiming any accountability for the actions of those who came before them, Penn Warren reminds us that history is not escapable, not removable, not something we can just wash away. The current racial divisions that run so deep in our country are the tangible, impossible-to-wash-away remnants of what Toni Morrison referred to as “like the holocaust, but for 200 years.” We enslaved millions of human beings for two centuries in this country, separated families, abused, murdered, chained, tortured.… No good came of this, despite how emphatically some on the right want to tell you it can and has. Turning to our history with indigenous people, we are faced with similarly horrific, factual historical realities. Two miners are killed after trespassing on Spokane tribal lands, and the U.S. Cavalry retaliate by murdering thousands then setting grain storage barns ablaze and slaughtering hundreds upon hundreds of Spokane horses on a warm September day much like today, winter about to descend…all to assure that the savages had learned their lesson. Many more die of starvation that winter. This just one of an endless stream of factual atrocities that live on even now, a stark, inescapable history that inspired Sherman Alexie’s powerful novel, Reservation Blues.
The radical right would script the history of America much as I learned it as a child. Western lands came into our possession through things like The Louisiana Purchase, brave settlers in wagon trains following their dreams of liberty and independence westward even as they fought off the relentless attacks of brutal, evil savages….and the wise founders of the country boldly proclaimed “all men are created equal” (even as many of them owned human beings as slaves)…a history, that, like the early stanzas of the poem is idyllic, innocent, free of blood, murder, sin.
The subtlety of the poem is its great strength. It sets two different methods of considering history side by side, the one more convenient and pleasant, the other difficult, problematic. The poem reminds us that the often ugly gut-scrawl of our history cannot ever be washed away despite our best efforts, that we will forever be forced to contend with it in all its stark horror, acknowledging it as something we cannot ever escape, as something we need to claim—and then work as hard as we can to rectify its myriad, far-reaching remnants and consequences surviving in our present.
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I’m not sure I’ll be able to get that image of horses out of my mind. I feel ill-equipped to comment on another land’s history but I can feel the trauma from here in your writing and in the poem. Thank you for sharing this important work.